Ali Farka Touré & Ry Cooder - Talking Timbuktu
Album
This Grammy-winning 1994 collaboration, recorded in Los Angeles, is the easiest door into Malian guitar for blues listeners. Ry Cooder's slide and the guest playing of Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown stay in the background, so Ali Farka Touré's rolling, hypnotic guitar and low voice lead. Diaraby, a slow love song, is the track that shows why people hear a link between his music and the Mississippi blues.